Succession
Schacht and Layish consider the Qur ’anic reform of succession as an improvement for women who did not inherit anything in pre-Islamic time. Out of the estate of a deceased the costs of the funeral and the debts are paid first.
If the debts equal or exceed the assets of the estate of the deceased, the assets are distributed among the creditors. The umm al-walad, the female slave who has borne her master a child, becomes a free person as well as the child on the death of her master. Excluded from succession are slaves and persons who have caused the death of the deceased. Difference in religion and domicile also matter and are disputed. The power to make a legacy is generally limited to one third of the estate. Female relatives generally receive half the share of male relatives of the same degree.The Imamiyya differs in inheritance from the rulings the Sunni schools developed.
For the Sunnis, the heirs are:
1) those entitled to a fixed share (fard) based on Qur’an 4:7—14;
2) the 'asaba (male agnate relatives);
3) the manumitter;
4) the cognates (dhawu al-arham), etc.107
For the Sunnis, entitlement to succeed on intestacy rests thus on three distinct grounds which produce three separate groups of legal heirs: the Qur’anic sharers, the male agnate relatives ( 'asaba) of the deceased, and, failing these two, female and cognate relatives. The Imamiyya recognizes ‘relationship’ (qaraba) as a basis of entitlement. Accordingly, all relatives (with the exception of the spouse relict who always takes his or her Qur’anic share) are divided into the following classes:
1) the lineal descendants and parents of the deceased;
2) brothers, sisters and their issue together with the grandparents of the deceased; and
3) uncles and aunts as well as their issue.
Entitlement, therefore, depends solely upon the position of the claimant heir within this scheme.
The system differs vitally from Sunni law in that it affords no distinctive place to the male agnate relatives. Furthermore, female and cognate relatives who in Sunni law would only succeed in the last resort, are in Shi' i law integrated within the general framework of classes. For example, the paternal grandfather of the deceased occupies a favoured position in the Sunni scheme in the absence of the deceased’s father. Ranking as a substitute heir for the latter, he will take a Quranic share of one-sixth in the presence of any child of the deceased, while by virtue of his agnate relationship he will be entitled, in addition, to any residue where the only surviving child of the deceased is a daughter, will take twice as much as the deceased’s mother, when in competition with her alone or in company with the spouse relict, and finally will totally exclude any children of the deceased’s daughter. However, in the Imamiyya, the presence of a child, grandchild or mother of the propositus precludes the paternal grandfather from any rights of succession at all.108 As Coulson states, it is not only that females and cognate relatives generally enjoy a more privileged position in Shi' i law, but rather that Sunni law, in recognizing the claims of the agnate collaterals, embodies a much broader concept of the family group than Shi' i law, which rests upon the predominance of the narrower tie of relationship existing between a mother and father and their issue.1094